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The San Francisco Rebound: When Capital, Scarcity, and AI Collide

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​ If you want to understand real estate markets, go to the open houses. Earlier this year in Pacific Heights, a two-bedroom, one-bath co-op hit the market. To reach the front door you had to climb eight flights of stairs—85 steps in total, no elevator. Fourteen offers later, the property sold for $1.62 million—more than $400,000 over the asking price. That’s San Francisco right now. For the past few years, much of the national housing market has been stuck in neutral. Mortgage rates remain elevated, affordability is stretched, and transaction volumes have slowed across the country. But markets never move in perfect unison. And increasingly, San Francisco is starting to look like its own economic universe again. The AI Economy Is Rewriting the Market A powerful mix of forces is pulling demand back into the city. The first—and most obvious—is the explosion of artificial intelligence companies. Capital is flooding into the sector, and the epicenter of that investment rem...
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Small Grants, Big Impact: What Maine’s ADU Pilot Program Gets Right About the Housing Crisis

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​ Across the country, we keep looking for a silver bullet to fix the housing shortage. Massive subsidies. Mega-developments. Sweeping federal programs. But sometimes the most practical solutions are the smallest ones. Three cities in Maine—Rockland, Bath, and Brunswick—are piloting a program that offers homeowners up to $10,000 to build an accessory dwelling unit (ADU). It’s called the ADU Boost Pilot Program, and while the grant itself may seem modest, the concept behind it is exactly the kind of thinking we need more of in housing policy. From a real estate developer’s perspective, programs like this recognize something the market has been saying for years: the fastest way to create housing isn’t always through large-scale projects. Sometimes it’s by empowering existing property owners to add supply incrementally. The Quiet Power of Accessory Dwelling Units ADUs—sometimes called carriage houses, backyard cottages, or in-law apartments—are one of the most underutilized t...
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